What is Phishing?

Phishing means sending an e-mail that falsely claims to be from a particular enterprise (like your bank) and asking for sensitive financial information. Phishing is sending out a 'bait' in the form of a spoofed e-mail that closely mimics most bank notifications.

The fraudulent mail is socially engineered to convince recipients to divulge sensitive information such as credit card numbers, PIN, social security numbers and some such information, says Trend Micro.

Some phishing mails include a legitimate-looking URL that actually conceals the phishing URL, or the site where the stolen information is stored, while some include an image, which when clicked, directs the affected user to the phishing site.

There are ways to 'spoof' an e-mail so that it appears to have come from someone other than the person who is actually sending it. An e-mail can be spoofed by tweaking the settings of e-mail clients like Outlook Express, Netscape Messenger and Eudora. E-mail spoofing is a popular way of scamming online Inhome.rediff

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